Norman C. Gysbers, PhD, is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. He received his bachelor’s degree from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, in 1954. He was a teacher in the Muskegon Heights Michigan School District (1954–1956) and served in the U.S. Army Artillery (1956–1958). He received his master’s (1959) and doctorate (1963) from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Missouri–Columbia in 1963 as an assistant professor. In addition to his duties as an assistant professor, he also served as the licensed school counselor at the University Laboratory School until 1970.

He was awarded a Franqui Professorship from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and lectured there in February 1984. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong in May 2000, 2002, and 2004; a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in January 2001; and a scholar in residence at the University of British Columbia in July/August 2000. He also was an International Visiting Scholar at National Taiwan Normal University in 2011.

His research and teaching interests are in career development, career counseling, and school guidance a evaluation. He is the author of 96 articles, 40 chapters in published books, 15 monographs, and 22 books, one of which has been translated into Italian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, and one into Chinese. He has received many awards, most notably the National Career Development Association’s Eminent Career Award in 1989; the Missouri Career Development Association’s Lifetime Career Achievement Award in 2013; the American School Counselor Association’s Mary Gehrke Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004; the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002; the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004; the Faculty/Alumni Award from the University of Missouri–Columbia in 1997; and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Mizzou Alumni Association, University of Missouri, in 2008. Gysbers was editor of The Career Development Quarterly (1962–1970), president of the National Career Development Association (1972–1973), president of the American Counseling Association (1977–1978), and vice president of the Association of Career and Technical Education (1979–1982). He was also editor of the Journal of Career Development from 1978 until 2006.